Rachel M. Magee
​
​youth advocate
researcher
educator

assistant professor
School of Information Sciences
University of Illinois

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​Full Curriculum Vitae

rmmageeATillinoisDOTedu
Howdy all.  I'm youth advocate and assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, working in the School of Information Sciences (iSchool). I examine the ways young people interact with technology and what those practices mean for their engagement with information. I've worked with youth - including children, teens, and early adults - for more than 15 years, and am excited to bring that experience to bear on my research and teaching. I was recently awarded a generous Early Career Development Grant by the Institute of Museum and Library Services to research the best ways to connect teens to the original research process and incorporate youth perspectives into research about teen technology practices. 

I study information science from a socio-technical perspective, deeply informed by my background as a teen services librarian. In 2015, I completed my Ph.D. at Drexel University in the College of Computing and Informatics. At Drexel, in addition to my own research, I worked with the Youth Online Research Group and the Social Computing Research Group. My dissertation focused on teens' everyday life technology use. My doctoral research was supported by the National Science Foundation's Graduate Research Fellowship Program*, as well as the Young Adult Library Services Association. Denise E. Agosto and Andrea Forte were my dissertation co-advisors, and my committee included Kristene Unsworth, Urs Gasser (Harvard University), and Sean P. Goggins (University of Missouri). In the past, I also had the great opportunity to work as an intern at the Youth and Media Lab at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

Previously, I worked for the Los Angeles County Public Library, and received my Masters in Information Resources and Library Science from the University of Arizona. My work also builds on my B.A. in English and B.S. in Radio-Television-Film, both from the University of Texas at Austin. Thanks for visiting, and feel free to get in touch!
*Any opinion, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

Recent Highlights:
  • Awarded Institute of Museum and Library Services Early Career Development Grant for the Young Researchers Project: http://ischool.illinois.edu/news-events/news/2018/04/magee-awarded-imls-grant-young-researchers-project
  • Accepted: iConference 2019 Session on Interaction and Engagement "Mental Health and the iSchools: Audiences and Strategies for Support," to be presented spring 2019 
  • Presented “Concepts for Research Inclusion" at the School of Information Sciences at University of Illinois Diversity Committee Meeting, Nov. 9, 2018. Slides online:  http://go.illinois.edu/researchinclusion 
  • Presented, with students Sharon Han, Vicki Pietrus, and Amari Simpson, "Young Researchers" at the 2018 University of Illinois School of Information Sciences Research Showcase, Oct. 31, 2018. Slides online: http://go.illinois.edu/youngresearchers2018showcase ​
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